Chris Sharp with his daughter Cath Sharp. He was recognised with a New Zealand Land Search and Rescue life membership in a special ceremony at Gisborne's Waikanae Surf Life Saving Club over the weekend for his six decades of service. Photo / Rebecca Grunwell
“I’ve had a glorious time.”
Chris Sharp looks back fondly on his impressive 63 years serving as a Land Search and Rescue volunteer.
Sharp, known to many as “Sharpie”, is one of the organisation’s longest-serving active volunteers, if not the longest, and has filled just about every role from the front line to the back line of rescue operations.
That mahi (work) was recognised in a special ceremony at Gisborne’s Waikanae Surf Life Saving Club over the weekend, where Sharp was named a life member of Land Search and Rescue New Zealand (LSRNZ).
LSRNZ chief operating officer Tony Wells told attendees that Sharp was only the 11th person named a life member in nearly 20 years.
“For our organisation, it is harder to get a life membership than a royal honour,” Wells said.
A custom badge was made for Sharp to mark 60 years as a volunteer. Wells could recall attending several 50-year service award presentations for volunteers, but no other 60-year awards.
Gisborne Land Search and Rescue was formed on July 13, 1960 by Bill Bishop, Bob Creswell, Bill Peach and Brian Burgess.
Sharp said his involvement began in the early 1960s when he and a friend joined a search and rescue exercise in Wairoa.
“The two of us were seriously involved in the outdoors,” he said. “We invited ourselves along to the exercise, and I have been busy ever since.”
A farmer by trade, he said most of his bosses were understanding about his time away for volunteer search and rescue work.
“They were very conciliatory about Sharp disappearing into the scrub for two or three days,” Sharp said.
“Most of the supervisors were very good about the troops I was with. Occasionally, we came across one or two that decided to be a bit pernickety about how things went. You had to talk to them about it, ‘how about your son being lost’, and all the rest of it.”
He was a founding member of the Gisborne Land Search and Rescue Charitable Trust Board and only stood down as trust chairman in 2022.
Sharp said it was too difficult to pick any particular favourite part of his volunteering work, but a particularly memorable rescue for him was that of a 14-year-old boy who had got separated from his school group on Mount Hikurangi and went missing.
“I was search controller at the time. One of the members of the party, a possum trapper, came up with the idea that there were footmarks in the river. I said that has got to be him. The river had just been up. It had been washed so there were no [earlier] footmarks.
“He turned up on the job and we got him out.”
Sharp was left “quite astounded” by the life membership.
“I’ve thoroughly enjoyed what I have been up to, mixed up with all sorts of people. I’ve had a glorious time with search and rescue.”
In 2010, he was a driving force behind establishing the WanderSearch programme in the Tairāwhiti District.
WanderSearch administers pendants that can be used to help find at-risk people with the potential to wander, such as those with dementia or who are neurodiverse.
“I thought: ‘That is a good thing for the region to have.’ I was chairman of the search and rescue committee, so I brought it up at the committee meeting and got everyone to get behind and away we went.
“I didn’t quite know what I was letting myself in for, letting this group in for. It became bigger and bigger and bigger.”
He told the people gathered at the weekend that his family “got dropped in the middle of it on many occasions” when he was called to go away, sometimes for half a day and sometimes for half a week or more.
“I’d like to thank a few people, including my two kids.
“We’ve had some glorious times, some marvellous times with search and rescue. Hectic at times, hectic to the limit, but we got there.”
Wendy Notting, WanderSearch co-ordinator for Gisborne Land Search and Rescue, and Wendy Stichbury, chair of Gisborne Land Search and Rescue, gathered 15 letters of support for Sharp’s nomination as a life member.
“His passion and commitment were made possible by the love and support of his late wife, Bronwyn, who managed the children, the household and the farm during Chris’s frequent and unpredictable absences,” Notting said in a speech at the award ceremony.
“Chris was extremely organised. His pack was always ready and he would be gone within 10 to 15 minutes of a call-out.
“Chris has worn many hats over the decades. He has been a team leader, trustee, the trust chairman, a police SAR adviser, a fundraiser, a mentor and more recently, the gatekeeper to ensure everyone is signed in at an operation.”
Sharp was also involved in numerous other groups across the region, including the Gisborne Canoe and Tramping Club, Public Access New Zealand, the Eastern Fish and Game Council, the Mountain Safety Council and the Rescue Helicopter Trust, St John and the Eastland Outdoor Education Trust.
Stichbury said he had driven funding for the Motu repeater, which provides coverage for the area, helped to establish an endowment fund with the Sunrise Foundation and had fundraised “many hundreds of thousands of dollars” for Gisborne Land Search and Rescue.
Notting and Stichbury thanked Sharp’s children – Cathy and Tim Sharp – for “sharing” their dad, and their assistance with research for the award.
Former Tairāwhiti police area commander Sam Aberahama, in a recorded message for the occasion, described Sharp as a “natural leader of men who speaks with mana, integrity [and] honesty”.